III. The History of Open Admissions and Remedial Education ...

III. The History of Open Admissions and Remedial Education at the City University of New York

CUNY's statutory mission has remained essentially unchanged since the Free Academy was established in 1847. According to section 6201 of the New York State Education Law, CUNY is "an independent system of higher education" committed to "academic excellence and to the provision of equal access and opportunity for students, faculty and staff from all ethnic and racial groups and from both sexes." Access and excellence are CUNY's historic goals. But over the past 30 years, the "access" portion of the mission has overwhelmed the university, at the expense of excellence. This Part traces the history of that transformation.

Section A, "History of Open Admissions and Remediation in the U.S.," shows that since at least the late 1800s, this country's higher education sector has struggled over whether four-year colleges should provide postsecondary remediation.

Section B, "Educational Opportunity and Admissions Policies at CUNY (1847-1968)," explains that from 1847 ? when the first of the colleges that make up CUNY was founded ? until the implementation of open admissions in 1970, only those students with certain academic credentials could be admitted to CUNY undergraduate degree programs. Competitive test scores (from 1847), a college preparatory or "Regents" diploma (from 1882), and a minimum high school average (from 1924) were required, at both the community and senior colleges.

Section C, "The Birth of Open Admissions at CUNY (1965-1970)," describes how increases in the availability of government aid for underprepared students, coupled with community demands for increased minority representation, led CUNY to abandon its insistence on objective standards of college readiness and to implement a policy of access for all high school graduates. This decision was made in late 1969, and it was implemented less than twelve months later. In the fall of 1970, CUNY's community colleges began to admit any student with a high school diploma ? Regents or not. The changes in senior college admissions, while more subtle, were more dramatic in effect: the senior colleges began to admit students with Regents and non-Regents diplomas on equal terms; they began to admit students on the basis of class rank ? a relative rather than absolute measure; and they discontinued the use of standardized test scores for admissions.

In Section D, "CUNY's Solution to the Problem of Segregation (1969-1973)," we learn that the CUNY Trustees viewed racial and academic integration as virtually synonymous. Thus, CUNY's principal strategy for racial integration was to spread academically underprepared students throughout the university's 17 colleges, and to create a "sizeable identifiable group" of the most severely underprepared students on each senior college campus.

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Section E, "The Early Years of Open Admissions: CUNY and the BOE (1970-1974)," explains that CUNY is unique among the nation's large open admissions public university systems in that more than half of its students come from a single school system: the New York City public schools. In the early years of open admissions, CUNY officials were shocked to discover how poorly prepared many of the new students were. They viewed these students' poor reading skills as a major indictment of the city's high schools, and they considered returning the responsibility for remediation to the public schools. Eventually, however, they decided to focus on improving the articulation between BOE and CUNY programs.

In Section F, "CUNY Faces a Turning Point (1975-1976)," we learn that, during a period of fiscal crisis, CUNY's Trustees twice voted to reestablish admissions standards. The first plan would have required applicants to demonstrate 8th grade competency in reading and math; the second would have required those community college students who did not have a minimum high school average, class rank, or General Equivalency Diploma ("GED")3 score to obtain remediation through a "transitional program." Neither of these policies was ever implemented. In 1976, CUNY bowed to political pressures and began charging tuition, for the first time in its long history.

Section G, "The Institutionalization of Remediation (1976-1990)," identifies two trends that fueled the institutionalization of large-scale postsecondary remediation at CUNY: a decline in the quality of the public schools (arguably a result of CUNY's own open admissions policy), and the decline in CUNY enrollment that followed the imposition of tuition. By the late-1970s, the city's public schools had deteriorated to such a point that a significant number of graduates with B averages were arriving at CUNY with extensive remedial needs. School officials attributed declines in rigorous courses to the initiation of open admissions at CUNY. Meanwhile, CUNY ? in response to declining enrollment ? lowered its admissions standards and sent counselors into the public schools to recruit students. During this period, and in the years that followed, the Trustees and the administration struggled to establish system-wide standards for grading, academic progress, transfer, testing, and other issues raised by the influx of vast numbers of remedial students.

Section H, "The Gap Between Policy and Implementation (1993-1999)," documents CUNY's failure to implement and enforce many of the transfer and testing policies that were established by the Trustees in 1976 and 1985. Some of those policies were not fully implemented until 1998 ? more than twenty years after their enactment.

In recent years, CUNY has enacted numerous policies aimed at ratcheting up standards. Section I, "Standards Revisited (1992-1999)," describes CUNY's new policy directions in the areas of college preparation, admissions, testing, remediation, and graduation. While some of

3 See footnote 239 for an explanation of the GE D.

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the recent changes were based on a systematic analysis of what has worked in the past, others seem more reactive and less carefully thought through.

Finally, Section J, "Epilogue," reflects on three decades of policymaking in the areas of admissions and remediation. Before 1970, CUNY provided what was, by all accounts, an excellent education, but its standards of access ? while broader than most ? were clearly unacceptable in post-civil-rights-movement America. Over the last 29 years, CUNY has provided broad access, but in the process, its seventeen colleges have become academically homogenized. In the 1990s, the university has begun to try to restore the balance between the two aspects of its historic mission. A return to bachelor's admission standards that emphasize Regents courses, high school grades, and standardized testing is one hopeful sign of this "new" direction.

A. History of Open Admissions and Remedial Education in the U.S.

Open admissions in this country dates back to the 19th century, when Congress passed the Morrill Act to assist states in financing higher education institutions, known as land-grant colleges, to teach agriculture and mechanical arts. These colleges were typically open to all state residents who had completed an academic course of study in high school.4

Today, open admissions is associated more closely with two-year "community colleges." Such institutions date back to the early 20th century, when state policymakers, recognizing that geography and cost were barriers to attendance at senior colleges, established junior colleges to provide lower-division course work in more accessible locations and at a lower price.5 After World War II, in response to the increase in demand for access to public higher education fueled by the G.I. Bill, the mission of junior colleges was expanded to include the promotion of lifelong learning. In addition to offering the first two years of the four-year degree, they threw open their doors to students who wanted to pursue vocational, college preparation, and adult and continuing education programs.6

Postsecondary remediation has a somewhat longer history in this country than open admissions, if one considers Harvard College's provision of Latin and Greek tutors to its underprepared students in the 1600s to be a form of remediation.7 Table 1 shows that, since at least the late

4 Albert L. Lorenzo, "The Mission and Functions of the Community College: An Overview," in A Handbook on the Community College in A merica, ed. George A. Baker, III. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993), 112-115. 5 Ibid., 113. 6 James L. Ratcliff, "Seven Streams in the Historical Development of the Modern American Community College," in A Handbook on the Community College in A merica, ed. George A. Baker, III. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993), 21. 7 Milton G. Spann and Suella McCrimmon, "Remedial/Developmental E ducation: Past, Present, and Future," in A Handbook on the Community College in A merica, ed. George A. Baker, III. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993), 164.

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1800s, the higher education sector has struggled over where to locate postsecondary remediation and how to explain the need for it.

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Table 1. History of Remediation in the U.S., 1800s - Present

19th century early 20th century

1920s WWII Post-WWII

1950s 1960s 1970s

1980s 1990s

Historical Context

Primary and secondary education were in utero throughout the 19th century. Compulsory secondary education was not enforced until the early 20th century. High school preparation improved. A new generation of twoyear colleges was established. As a result of the G.I. Bill, colleges and universities were flooded with underprepared students.

Sputnik-era competition drove up four-year college admissions standards. Increasing numbers of underprepared students were graduating from high school. The Higher Education Act, passed in 1965, expanded access for educationally and economically disadvantaged students.

Higher education resources have grown tighter. The

Locus of Remediation

As early as the mid-1800s, universities were calling for an end to the admission of students with "defective preparation." Between the Civil War and WWI, remediation was widespread in American colleges.

Most four-year institutions stopped providing remediation. Two-year colleges absorbed most of the remedial student population.

Four-year colleges began testing applicants to separate "underachievers" from "lowability" students and tried to admit only the more promising underprepared students. Many of those who were rejected ? the socalled "low-ability" students ? enrolled instead in community colleges and technical institutes. The bulk of remediation shifted to two-year institutions.

Two- and four-year colleges expanded access and began offering some credit for remedial work. Remediation became a major function of community colleges. In the 1970s, access continued to expand, and remediation became institutionalized at the postsecondary level.

Policymakers and higher education institutions have once again begun scrutinizing the

Explanations of Poor Academic Performance From 1894 through the 1920s, it was widely believed that poor study habits were the underlying cause of poor academic performance.

During the 1930s and `40s, poor reading and study skills were believed to be the causes of poor academic performance.

Education professionals began to cite environmental and socioeconomic factors as the primary causes of poor academic performance, and "compensatory" replaced "remedial" as the term of choice to describe the extra education these students required.

Policymakers and education professionals continued to believe that socioeconomic factors were the main impediment to academic achievement until the early 1970s, when multiple factors such as cultural and individual differences and different learning styles were added to the list of causes. "Developmental education," focusing on academic potential rather than deficit, became the preferred term.

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